This article introduces a peculiar distinction between “human” rights and “fundamental” rights,
explaining through diverse areas, the role that the difference can play. Rights are loaded with
contrasting properties and burdens, opposing features and values (neutral, pre-political, negotiable,
democratic, etc.). On the contrary, we should accept -on one side- human rights as moral visions of
what is due to human beings, deontological imperatives, even if abstract. But on the other side we
cannot ignore the ethical problems: e.g. those resulting from their blind implementation. We need to
enhance the institutional, legal and ethical-political meaning of “fundamental” rights, i.e. those
which are assigned a meta-normative role in a legal order and an ultimate value in the
corresponding social and ethical context. The article shows also how the use of these definitions can
clear some theoretical misunderstandings, improve our critical analysis and help in explanation of
real processes. This article will be published in “Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie”, in
2007